religion

The Goddess Studies Unit seeks to retrieve the narrative importance of female figures in mythology and religion and works to infuse equity into the nature of exclusion. How does this year's theme, "Religion, Race, and Racism," intersect with female (cis/LGBTQ/inclusive) figures and the study of women in narrative and in culture? Are there goddesses, goddess scholarship, or goddess-centric worship that subvert racialization and/or colonization? Are there figures that have subverted demonization due to race or gender or who have been claimed to combat such "Othering"? Contrarily, are there figures that have been suppressed or marginalized due to race and/or gender that are currently being reclaimed, reinterpreted, or re-discovered? How?

The English Department at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan is honored to invite you to its 6th international conference, which will take place on 26th – 27th October 2016. It is an interdisciplinary conference focusing on the exploration of a broad range of themes in linguistics, literature, and translation. It provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and research outcomes in these fields.

We are calling for the submission of abstracts related to the topic themes listed below. Proposals will go through a rigorous review by the Conference Academic Committee. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis, and authors will be notified with the committee's decision.

We are pleased to announce a CFP for submissions to the Fourth Annual Fandom and Neomedia Studies (FANS) Conference in Dallas, TX, on 4 and 5 June 2016. Our keynote this year will be a joint presentation by Angela Drummond-Matthews and Debbie Scally. It is also our privilege to host Dr. Ryosuke Watanabe, Executive Director of the International College of Liberal Arts at Yamanashi Gakuin University, who will be presenting on the international scholarship opportunities his university offers for students as well as programs to partner with schools in Europe, Canada, and across the US. PLUS! We are working on a surprise guest group of industry professionals to add to the range and interest of our conference.

This Eighth International Conference on Iris Murdoch celebrates a new collaboration between the University of Chichester, and the Iris Murdoch Archive Project at Kingston University London. It will take place in the new venue of the beautiful university city of Chichester in Sussex, an area of England rich in literary connections, and in easy reach of major transport hubs, which we hope delegates from abroad will enjoy discovering.

This panel aims to explore the ways in which physical place has become archival within 20th and 21st century literatures. One of the most obvious examples may be the ways in which place is archival in post-9/11 literatures, but this panel welcomes varied and original interpretations of place as archive.

This year marks 10 years since the untimely death of Octavia Butler. It is also the 40th anniversary of the publication of her first novel, Patternmaster. Butler was a pioneer in science fiction writing with her groundbreaking integration of race, sexual politics, and religion with traditional elements of the genre. This panel aims to celebrate Butler's life and works by presenting on a variety of topics, particularly the conference's theme of Utopia/Dystopia. Other possible paper topics include a pedagogical study of Butler's work, a theological approach to Butler's most celebrated works (Kindred and the Parable series), and an analysis of Butler's treatment of space and migration throughout her oeuvre.

The veil's ancient and modern history and its resurgence in our time is an important subject for discussion for those of us posing new questions about women and Islam in literature, film, and fine arts. In Europe and the U.S., the veil is often presented through errors of conceptualizations. The media, in particular, seems to be obsessed with the role of the veil. Recurrently, these discussions run along essentialist and ahistorical lines associating Islam with the ideology of shame and honor. Moreover, the Muslim immigrant "problem" in Europe and the U.S. and the fear of Islam and Muslims in connection with terrorism has heightened the controversy on the issue of the veil.

In the spirit of MMLA's conference theme of "Border States," this roundtable seeks to explore new pedagogical approaches to the teaching of world literature to college undergraduates, especially those in survey courses, though others will be considered. We are particularly interested in papers that explore how we introduce students to "world literature" in new and innovative ways, models that move from traditional surveys to the borders of world literature, and ways in which world literature, broadly speaking, can be effectively included in the curricula.